1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a stacker position changer which is operable to move the ejection stacker between a first position adapted to receive a first medium ejected from a recording apparatus (liquid ejecting apparatus), and a second position adapted to feed or receive a first medium and a second medium to or from the recording apparatus (liquid ejecting apparatus). The present invention also relates to a recording apparatus and a liquid ejecting apparatus incorporating such a stacker position changer.
The liquid ejecting apparatus is not limited to a printer, a copier, or a facsimile which employs an ink jet recording head and ejects ink from the recording head to a recording medium, to thus effect recording. The liquid ejecting apparatus is employed to encompasses an apparatus that ejects a liquid appropriate to an application, in place of ink, from a liquid ejecting head corresponding to the ink jet recording head onto a target medium corresponding to a recording medium, thereby causing the liquid to adhere to the medium.
In addition to the recording head, the liquid ejecting head encompasses a coloring material ejecting head used for manufacturing a color filer such as a liquid-crystal display or the-shaped; an electrode material (conductive paste) ejecting head used for forming electrodes, such as an organic EL display or a field emission display (FED) or the-shaped; a bio-organic substance ejecting head used for manufacturing a bio-chip; a sample ejecting head serving as a precision pipette; and the-shaped.
The recording apparatus is not limited to a printer, a copier, or a facsimile which employs an ink jet recording head and ejects ink from the recording head to a recording medium, to thus effect recording. The recording apparatus is employed to encompasses an apparatus that performs recording on a recording medium in a dot-impact manner, a thermal transfer manner, or an electrophotographic manner.
In addition, in the present specification, the “first medium” includes a flexible sheet medium having flexibility such as paper and an OHP (Over Head Projector) sheet, and the “second medium” includes a rigid medium having almost no flexibility such as a disk tray adapted to mount a disk medium (CD-R, DVD-R or the like).
2. Related Art
Recording to a label face of a disk medium like a CD-R as an example of the rigid medium has conventionally been carried out by the ink jet recording apparatus which executes recording to a sheet as an example of the flexible medium. Sheets are stacked in a hopper provided upstream of a conveying path, and only the uppermost sheet of the stacked sheets is picked up by a feeding roller having a D-shape in side view in cooperation with a pivot movement of the hopper.
Then, the sheet is fed from the feeding roller to a conveying roller pair on the downstream side in the sheet conveying direction, and is conveyed to a recording section while being nipped by the conveying roller pair. Further, the sheet is subjected to recording by the recording section, and is then ejected to an ejection stacker by an ejecting roller pair on the downstream side in the sheet conveying direction.
Generally, in order to place the recorded sheet to the ejection stacker, the ejection stacker is arranged below the ejecting roller pair.
On the other hand, when recording is executed on a label face of a disk medium, the disk medium is attached on a disk tray and is subjected to recording in order to convey the disk medium with a good posture. At this time, a path between a feeding roller and a conveying roller in a conveying path for a flexible sheet is not provided linearly in order to separate sheets which are likely to be fed in duplicate. Accordingly, a rigid disk medium and the disk tray cannot be set in the hopper, unlike the sheet medium.
Thus, a conveying path on the downstream side in the sheet conveying direction from the conveying roller pair is provided linearly, the disk tray is inserted from the ejecting roller pair provided on the downstream side in the sheet conveying direction of the sheet medium, and the ejecting roller pair is driven reversely to move the disk tray to a position where an upstream recording head can execute recording to the label face of the disk medium. Also, recording is executed to the label face of the disk medium while the disk tray is moved to the downstream side from a recording start position.
At this time, since the thickness of a sheet medium and the thickness of the disk tray are different from each other, it is necessary to change and adjust the spacing, i.e., platen gap (also referred to as “paper gap”) between the recording head and the disk tray. It is also necessary to make a change about the ejecting roller pair. Generally, as an ejecting follower roller on the follower side of the ejecting roller pair, a so-called spur roller is used in order to nip a sheet medium in cooperation with a driving-side roller, and make the contact area with the recording surface of the sheet medium as small as possible.
Meanwhile, when the spur roller is used for movement of the disk tray, there is a possibility of damaging data recorded on the disk medium due to abutment of the roller on the label face of the disk medium. Thus, when recording is executed on the label face of a disk medium, the spur roller is configured to retreat, i.e., be released from the driving-side roller.
Such a configuration is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3633509 (JP-B-3633509) and Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 2004-90448A (JP-A-2004-90448), 2004-34637A (JP-A-2004-34637) and 2003-211760A (JP-A-2003-211760).
However, as the method of releasing the spur roller, there is the only way of taking users operation as a trigger. Moreover, in a case where the ejection stacker is configured to be movable so as to serve as both an ejection stacker and a tray guide, the ejection stacker is manually moved independently from the movement of the spur roller. Accordingly, when the user's operation is inadequate, there is a possibility that operation of the ejection stacker, the spur roller, etc. may become unstable. For example, irrespective of whether the ejection stacker is located in a position to take when recording is executed on a rigid medium, there may be occurred an inconsistent state caused by an erroneous operation that the spur roller is not located in a position to take when recording is executed on the rigid medium.
For example, Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 2005-14494A (JP-A-2005-14494) and 2005-212906A (JP-A-2005-212906) discloses an ejection stacker provided below the ejecting roller pair is moved upward so as to guide the disk tray to the ejecting roller pair. In other words, the ejection stacker is moved to the height of the linear conveying path when recording is executed the label face of the disk medium so that the ejection stacker may serve as both the tray guide and the ejection stacker of the disk tray which receives the disk tray to be ejected after the recording.
However, since the movement direction of the ejection stacker is only a vertical direction, them is a possibility that, if the ejection stacker extends far back to the upstream side in the sheet conveying direction, the disk tray may not be set easily. Also, when recording is executed on the label face of the disk medium, there is a possibility that, if the disk tray holding the disk medium is set in the ejection stacker, a downstream portion of the stacker in the sheet conveying direction during recording of the disk medium (upstream portion of the stacker in the sheet conveying direction before recording) might descend and unstable in posture.
For example, Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 2004-256232A (JP-A-2004-256232) and 2005-154115A (JP-A-2005-154115) disclose a front cover which also serves as an ejection stacker on which a recorded sheet is placed is provided in an ink jet recording apparatus which executes recording to a sheet medium as an example of the flexible medium. In a case where a closed state of the front cover cannot be detected, when the front cover is in the closed state, a recorded sheet cannot be ejected and placed on the front cover which servers as an ejection stacker. Accordingly, there is a possibility that a so-called an ejection jam may be caused.
On the other hand, in a case where the closed state of the front cover can be detected, the ejection jam can be prevented by stopping the sheet ejection. However, recording cannot be continued unless a user opens the front cover to release the state where the sheet ejection has stopped. Although recording can be continued without hindering recording and without causing an ejection jam if a configuration in which the closed state of the front cover can be detected and the front cover can be opened automatically is adopted, there occurs a problem that a configuration only for automatically opening the front cover should be newly provided. There is also a possibility that the structure becomes complicated and the cost becomes high as much as the newly provided configuration.